Movies with Issues

In one of the side in the book, Social Conscience Film is discussed. It mentions the movie Thelma and Lousie and how it changed the image of "the passive, male-dependent female". I never knew how much I needed to thank that hilarious movie. Nowadays, examples of strong women are everywhere but I guess our generation is lucky when it comes to that. I would not have made it in the 50's where my only job was to be a housewife, I have to many opinions for that role. I have taken for granted the fact that in movies, the main character can be a female without having a man at her side. In celebration of the Kentucky Derby, I watched the movie Secretariat. The female lead breaks the mold of typical housewife in order to take over the farm and enter the world of horse racing. Nobody respected her and they told her she didn't belong, but she fought and in the end she won (of course, because why else would they have made a movie about her). She did all this without her husband's support which is common in our generation. I want to say thanks to Thelma and Lousie for making it possible to be an independent woman in movies and real life.
    The other part of the discussion in the box that interested me was the fact that issue-driven movies hadn't been a big part of the film industry until Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List in 1993. That movie still makes an impact on viewer today which tells you what a genius Spielberg is. But now, every other movie in theaters is a serious film with a message. As fun as it is to go see such movies as Harry Potter, Tangled, and Pirates of the Caribbean, the movies you really remember are the ones that make an emotional impact on you. One of those movies for me was the 2009 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, The Hurt Locker. It is another movie about war and it documents the soldiers fighting in it. It was a movie that made me want to do something. I think the best issue-driven films make you want to take a stand for something in get involved with the fight, figuratively. As much money as the fun, entertaining movie make, I think it is the emotional, pack-a-punch movies that really keep people coming back to the theaters.

In the End...

The epilogue of Allende's "The House of the Spirits" was probably my favorite part of the whole book. I don't say that just because the book was finally over, but also because everything came full circle. Nothing bugs me more than when I have questions after I finish a book or a movie. (Inception's ending is still nagging me) Allende manages to tie up all the loose ends though in the final chapter. Alba makes her way home and convinces Esteban to write the story of their family. This allows the reader to understand how the book came to be and why Clara, Esteban, and Alba are the narrators. Also, with Esteban's death, all the characters from the beginning of the book are gone. With Alba being pregnant, it also shows that the story will continue on. I have hope that without Esteban's evil influence, Alba's child won't have to go through any traumatic events. Alba's child will also be the first in the family to have its parents happy and together out of love. Clara and Esteban's relationship took a toll in the behavior of their three kids, especially Nicholas. The fact that Blanca and Pedro could never be together led Alba to believe that her father was dead. Hopefully, this next child stands more of a chance for normalacy than any of the previous characters had. I loved the way that Allende came full circle with the story by using the same words "Barrabas came to us by sea."  I thought it was a neat trick that they wrote with Clara's diaries and that is how the beginning of the book got started. The fact that Allende leaves us with more hope than we have throughout the entire novel is nice of her. It leaves the reader feeling like the family is finally ok and I think that is the message Alba wanted to send by writing the book.

Postmodernist Architecture

Architecture fascinates me and I wish we could have discussed the architecture in the chapter more in class. I think the combinations of architecture with sculpture created some amazing pieces. I think Robert Venturi said it best when countering Mies van der Rohe's statement "less is more" with "less is a bore". Sure it might be cheaper and more efficient to mass produce apartment complexes, but nobody likes to look at those. People travel all over the world to get a glimpse of some well made buildings. I think the money made by tourism to places with incredible buildings such as the Taj Mahal, Louve Pyramid, and the Guggenheim Museum make up the money spent on building those works of art. Looking at a famous painting is one thing but imagine being able to walk inside and experience the setting of the painting. For me, that is an architectural masterpiece allows its viewers to do, experience it. The building that really caught my eye though was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in California. The design by Frank Gehry is breathtaking. The light reflecting off the stainless steel plates create a rippling affect. It is to blend together the minimalist ideals with the sponeity of action painting to produce a simple yet complex  magnificence. This sculptural architecture is just getting started and I'm sure there will be more great buildings, like Gehry's, to come.

Optical Illusions

White Disks by Bridget Riley

I have to say that i think op art is my favorite art style. I would much rather spend five minutes looking at a picture trying to find out how the painted lines are moving than try and find the hidden meaning within a Picasso. Both styles of art are appreciated and the simple colored basic lines of the op art doesn't take any thing away from the intricate brush work of multiple color layers done by Picasso or Van Gogh. In my opinion the op art paintings are more fun to look at because they challenged your brain. I always feel like I'm getting a mental workout by examining an opitical illusion. Bridget Riley had a strong hold on this style. In using achromatic colors such as black white and grey, her works appear to move, flicker and pulsate. These painting are entertaining to look at. In the painting above, the black dots seems to produce a white afterimage if you stare long enough. These afterimages create the allusion that the dots are actually flickering.

This other work by Riley is just as simple with regards to colors and lines. The whole things is made up of short diagonal lines. By lengthening the lines and making them skinnier, an illusion is made. When staring at the image, it seems to be spiraling downward. I like that the bottom is a white hole instead of a black hole. I think Riley deserves a lot of credit for making a painting move. This is a very different style of art that can be expanded into many different uses. 

Pollock's Paintings

I have to say that I am a fan of Jackson Pollock's paintings. While I'm not quite sure I would ever spend money to buy one, I would much rather look at paintings like these then try to decipher paintings like Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (pg 13 in our books). The most common complaint is that of "oh, well even I could 'paint' that." The question is, why haven't you. And, is the reason people don't actually like him because of the fact that they are jealous that he made so much money by just splattering paint? In my opinion, that makes him a genius. You can't fault the man for finding and maybe exploiting a way to make money doing the thing he loved. I think by not using a brush to place a line of color exactly where he thought it should be, but instead just flinging it and letting the paint land wherever, Pollock created a whole other style of art. Just how Picasso changed art by allowing a person to be painted from different view points, Pollock allowed art to not always be something in which you have to search to discover a meaning. When I think of the word "art", the broadest definition is: something pretty or interesting to look at. That is exactly what Pollock's art is for me, pretty and interesting to look at. The colors in his paintings with all their different shades blend together so well, yet you can see so many distinctions. I personally love how his paintings give off the feeling of having so much depth.
The thing that impresses me the most, is that Pollock created a style that everyone COULD do, if they wanted to. While somebody won't get paid as much as Pollock did, if they wanted to be an artist, they could be. I don't see this as lowering the standard of art, but instead, making art accessible to everyone. For this, Jackson Pollock has earned my respect as an artist.

No. 5, 1948

This painting became the most expensive painting in the world in 2006, when it was sold privately for $140 million dollars. (The world’s most famous painting are generally owned by museums, which very rarely sell them, which makes them quite literally priceless) Way to go Pollock.

Harlem by Hughes

"Harlem" by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And the run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

This is one of my favorite poems of all time. The first time I was introduced to it was when reading the play "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry. This poem appears at the front of the book and is very fitting with the plot of the play. The play is about an African-American family living in Chicago during the 1950s. The family comes into some money and all the members want to spend it on something different. All the things the members want are part of dreams that they had put of for most of their lives. This poem was perfect to set the tone. Hughes wrote this during the Harlem Renaissance, focusing on the "bloody summer" of 1919. During this time, African-Americans were on the quest for racial equality and in search of self-identity. "Harlem" asks the question: what happens when your dream has been limited, put off, or lost? Asking "what happens to a dream deferred?" the poem sketches a series of images of decay and waste, representing the dream (or the dreamer's) fate. While many of the potential consequences affect only the individual dreamer, the ending of the poem suggests that, when despair is epidemic, it may "explode" and cause broad social and political damage.

Many African-American poets and writers had avoided portraying lower-class black life because they believed such images fed racist stereotypes and attitudes. Langston Hughes believed that people deserved to understand the other side of the color spectrum. With his poems, he found a way to make them African-American with their rhythms, images, diction, and allusions. By doing this, I feel like he was empowering African-Americans instead of just complaining about the hardships they faced as a race. Overall, I really enjoy this poem every time I read it. And every time I read it, it makes me want to accomplish something big with my life because I don't want to find out what happens when a dream is deferred.

Catch-22

When reading through the section of World War II Fiction, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 caught my eye. While it is a hilarious read, I hated this book. No, that's not right. It was just a hard book to read and follow, and I felt like I was going into my own personal war everytime I sat down to read it. Once I finished it, I realized I had thoroughly enjoyed it and it had been worth it to struggle through it.
         This book delves into the mind of Yossarian, a soldier during World War II. While the general opinion of the other characters is that Yossarian is crazy, in a way he is the most sane of them all. Nobody believes him when he continues to claim that millions of people are trying to kill him, but is that not the whole concept of war, one country trying to kill the fighting members of the other country. In this way, he is the only one who understands what is going on around him. He takes the war personally and tries to take any chance he can, mainly by faking illnesses, to stop fighting. So while it sounds like a fabulous plot, it was sooo hard to read. The book is based upon circular reasoning. Part of the description of the book is, "Catch-22 is a law defined in various ways throughout the novel. First, Yossarian discovers that it is possible to be discharged from military service because of insanity. Always looking for a way out, Yossarian claims that he is insane, only to find out that by claiming that he is insane he has proved that he is obviously sane—since any sane person would claim that he or she is insane in order to avoid flying bombing missions." The book is full of these paradoxical statements. The characters themselves are hard to follow, and while entertaining (my favorite character was Major Major Major Major-yes I think his parents had a horrible sense of humour), have all had some mental trauma because of the war. In the end, Yossarian runs away from the army to escape from the dehumanizing macherinery of the military and has to flee to neutral Switzerland in order to try to gain control of his life back.
         The message of this book is very strong. What comes across loud and clear is the destructiveness of war on humanity. We all see pictures of the aftermath of the fighting, the wartorn countryside and the scorched marks on the earth. What we dont see is the traumatizing effects on a person's mental well-being after fighting in a war. The doctors have classified this as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a term which everybody is familiar with, but nobody can imagine the actual behavior behind the label. This book shows exactly why nobody should be expected to come out of a war all fine and dandy. The situations these men are lucky enough to live through are horrifying and unbelievable. While not as descriptive as Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Heller manages to depict the slow decay of the soliders mental health. I think this book is an incredible portrayal of the tragedies of war. It would be hard to talk about considering, not everyone has read it, but I'm very surprised literature during the wartime was not even brought up in class. While it is a very difficult and confusing read (I had to take notes to keep the characters straight) I would recommend it to anyone up to the challenge.